His talons caught her in the chest. She felt her suit’s systems fail one by one. The visor went dark. The servos locked. She crashed through rock and metal, tumbling into the depths of the crashed Frigate Orpheon—a derelict Pirate vessel from a previous battle.

Her suit powered up with a familiar hum, the orange and red visor reflecting the desolate landscape. She dropped from the ship like a meteor, landing in the caverns of Brinstar with a seismic thud. Immediately, the sensors picked up movement. Zoomers. Geemers. The small fry of this haunted world. They skittered away from her as she curled into a morph ball, rolling through a narrow vent that no human should have been able to fit through.

In the heart of Norfair, she found him. Kraid.

This was the longest hour of her life.

The fight was short. Brutal. Samus didn’t dance. She tackled him mid-flight, riding him into the side of a cliff, firing a relentless stream of plasma into his open mouth. He screeched, tried to flee, but she grappled his tail and pulled him back. One final, charged shot pierced his brain stem.

She rained missiles into the glass. It cracked, then shattered. The Mother Brain’s eye snapped open—ancient, hateful, and terrifyingly alive. It fired a hyper beam that melted through her shields like paper. Pain. White-hot, blinding pain. She felt ribs crack. Her suit’s warning systems screamed. She fell to one knee.